Inca jungle trail

(By Jemma)

I haven't blogged for a while because we have been very busy and I've been ill (fever, shivers down my spine, sick, feeling like I've been punched in the stomach). So I haven't had a lot of time to write and I let Jemma loose on the blog to fill in the gaps. So here is what she has written about our inca jungle trail...

(Also, we have been latched onto by a really annoying Argentinian after a hellish 33hour bus ride that was meant to be 21 hours so I am hurridly cutting and pasting this in an attempt to escape this hostel in Lima)


Inca Jungle day 1

We got up about 6.00 for our Inca jungle trail and the bus picked us up at 7.00. We said bye to our two English friends (Ben and Waime) as they set off on their bus, knowing that all of the groups would probably merge anyway and we would see them along the way. In our bus were 9 other people of all nationalities: French, Spanish, Mexican, American. We soon all got chatting and the journey to the mountains went quite quick. I took an altitude tablet because we were going up to 4800m which was the altitude I got sick at last time. The bus went up and up, winding along a narrow mountain path and I thought to myself, god I can't believe we are going to have to bike back down along this. When we got to the top, our tour guides explained how the bikes worked and we all got a full face covering helmet and gloves. Our two friends we had met arrived shortly after us but we were ready to go by this point so set off, behind the tour guide, down the mountain.

As Jenna is sleeping at the minute I've decided I'll take over the blog for today :)

As I can get quite competitive I got straight to the front of our group, just behind the tour guide. It was so much fun! The road was well paved and nice and smooth almost all the way down. The view was incredible and although Jenna had been a bit nervous she really enjoyed it too. As we got closer to the bottom of the mountain we crossed a few streams, which soaked most of the group, but I copied the guide and picked my feet up, keeping more or less dry. Jenna didn't. Whilst going down the hill we were overtaken by another group who must have been doing at least 50mph! The were overtaking cars and looking like pro bikers. When we got to the bottom we discovered these 'pro bikers' were our friends, and far from being pros Waime had come off at one point and Ben had nearly been hit by a lorry. Our whole group made it to the bottom unscathed, and feeling very proud of ourselves. I came in first and Jenna was far from last finishing in the middle of the group. The whole ride was about 60km

After the bike ride we were packed back into the bus and taken for lunch. We had a quinoa soup to start and chicken with rice as a main. It really was quite nice. We sat in the middle of our bi-lingual table with Jenna on the Spanish speaking side and me on the English speaking side.

Not all our group was doing the rafting, so after being shown to our hostel (again very nice, but with the standard cold shower) and dumping some of our stuff, we were bundled back in the van and taken to the place where we would go rafting. Again we bumped in our friends and got chatting to them as well as others in there group. There was an Aussie, Brazilian, Swedish and German, so again a pretty mixed group. We got to the river and watched as the guides threw our rafts down the embankment. We were all given a bright yellow top, life jacket, helmet and paddle, apart from one guy who was told not to fall out (he was given his equipment later)! After a quick safety brief we climbed into the raft and paddled out into the brown and grey river. Unfortunately there were 7 of us, which meant only 6 could paddle at a time, so Jenna had to get in the front bit. It was great fun, and halfway down I swapped with Jenna so she could have a go. Ben was sat behind Jenna and said he was quite scared that he'd get knocked out at first, but Jenna soon got the hang of it, and was a pro by the end. The rafting was only a grade 2, so quite tame, but it was good for Jenna's first time, if not a little short. They said as there had been a lot of rain we couldn't go any further down the river. We all got back in the van and went back to the hostel for a lovely cold shower before dinner. We were sharing a room with an American couple from Seattle, who had just been chilling out whilst we went rafting. As soon as we were all ready we went for dinner in the village.


Dinner was the usual soup, followed by a meat dish. We had 'lomo salteado', or something along those lines. It was strips of steak with various vegetables and rice. Right after finishing tea it started to chuck it down with rain. Jenna has sensibly brought her poncho, however I hadn't. Luckily the shop next to the restaurant sold them, so for 50p we both stayed dry (minus the fact that I stood in a huge puddle).

Day 2

We'd been told at dinner the night before that we needed to be at breakfast for 6am. Jenna had pancakes and I had a delicious fruit salad, with yoghurt. We then all got into the van and drove for about half an hour, passing 3 or 4 groups all walking! I felt like we cheated a bit here but I also knew we had an 8 hour trek ahead of us, so was happy to cheat. We stopped on the side of the road and our guide explained to us about the Machu Picchu national park. He explained that all the different cities were meant to look like animals and mirrored the animals you can see in the Milky Way, including a frog, puma, and Machu Picchu, which looks like a condor. After looking at the various towns after the tour, I can safely say that the Inka's were high on something most of the time. You have to have a very vivid imagination to see any of these animals. Our guide also explained the rules on the fruits that were growing all around. We were free to help ourselves but not to take any from the ground. 

We then set off up a very steep footpath, amongst mango, coconut, banana, orange, avocado and lime trees. It was a pretty tough walk, but stunning. After walking for about 1 hour we got to a house with a monkey, some kittens and some puppies. I'm glad I had my rabies jab! They were so cute, I couldn't help cuddling them. They then brought out some strange animals that looked like a type of beaver, called P..... We were told not to touch them as we had insect repellent on and this could kill them. Our guide then sat us round a table and explained about all the different plants found in the area. There was recently a new plant found which is now being used to try and cure cancer. He also told us about a plant used for make-up and proceeded to cover us all in face paint from this plant.

 Then he got us to sit in a circle and try coca leaves. Jenna had had enough of coca leaves in Bolivia so didn't have any, however I decided it might help with the altitude and joined in. They were as horrible as I remembered, but I lasted a bit longer with them this time. After this our guide brought out a load of clothes and we all dressed up in them for photos. By this time another group had arrived so it was time to get moving. Our guide told us that we'd now be walking along part of the actual inka trail.

I'm glad we didn't do the full inka trail as this was the hardest part of the trek. Once we were at the highest point the trees cleared and we were basically walking along a shear cliff face! The path was very good though as it was lined with stones all the way. 3 people in our group were scared of heights so had to crawl for most of this part. We got some fantastic photo's!  We made our way down

and got to our lunch spot where we all relaxed in hammocks until it was ready. Again we had a quinoa soup, followed by something like a chicken korma. There were more cute animals here, with the smallest kittens I've ever seems. I nearly took one with me. We set off again making our way down towards the river. Our guide was going at a real pace now and we were almost running to keep up. We crossed a few rickety bridges and some more beautiful scenery, and got to the place where we were to cross the river in a 'cable car' as the bridge had collapsed. One of the girls in our group thought the 'cable car' was just for our bags and that we would cross another way, but we were soon shown that this was our ride. It was basically a metal basket that was pulled across a wire over the fierce rapids below. It was an experience! After this we had about a 1 hour walk to the hot springs. We were all ready for them. They weren't the cleanest hot springs I've been in but they did the job and helped my aching legs. We were in them for about an hour before we decided we should probably get out. We'd been told we could get a bus back from the hot springs, but we kept walking, and no bus appeared. We weren't happy as it was now almost dark and my knee was really hurting. After 45 minutes uphill we got to our hostel. We had a room to ourselves this time, which was nice. We both had another cold shower and got ready for dinner. Jenna had steak and eggs and I had chicken and chips. We were also given a shot of inka tequila. We'd had an Aussie guy join our group that night and he encouraged me to stay out for a couple more drinks, whilst Jenna went back to the hostel. These drinks were greatly regretted in the morning!

The hot springs